The Daily: Kanye Teaches Opsec, Crypto Foes Joins Forces

The last 24 hours has been one of those all-too-rare periods in which the cryptosphere unites against a shared enemy. We’ll detail who in The Daily, right after we’ve discussed blockchain spam, Blockfolio’s new funding round, and how we learned an opsec lesson from Kanye West.

Coinbase Gaines an Altcoin, Bitfinex Loses a Bank

Coinbase finally listed 0z (ZRX) on Oct. 11, sending the price of the Ethereum-based token into a sharp climb. This miniature pump paled in comparison to that going on over at Yobit, whose exchange-orchestrated pump sent putincoin up 1,370 percent in just 15 minutes, prompting widespread condemnation. While pump and dumps have been part of crypto since the start, they’re rarely instigated by the exchanges themselves.

Two other noteworthy exchange stories also broke on Thursday. Firstly, Bittrex made the unusual decision of relisting metal (MTL), an altcoin it had previously delisted. Elsewhere, it was reported that Bitfinex has paused all USD deposits while it resolves banking issues, believed to have been caused by HSBC terminating the arrangement the exchange had in place via a private account with Global Trading Solutions. The same publication also revealed that Coinbase is shuttering its index fund for high-net-worth individuals, and will be focusing on selling its bundled baskets of cryptocurrencies instead.

Blockfolio Completes $11.5M Funding Round

Cryptocurrency portfolio app Blockfolio has completed a Series A round led by Pantera Capital. All told, over a dozen investment funds chipped in, as the project seeks to become more than just the industry’s go-to portfolio checker. Exchanges Bitmex and Huobi also got involved as part of the deal.

“Blockfolio Signal is the beginning of our effort to help the ecosystem move from an era of speculation to an era of participation,” enthused the team. “With our new investment partners, our continued collaboration with token teams and exchanges, and our millions of dedicated users, the future is exceedingly bright. We’re excited to work together to push the ecosystem forward, one block at a time.”

Litecoin Has a UTXO Problem

UTXOs, also known as “dust”, are a problem faced by all Bitcoin-based blockchains. Generally, these nominal wallet balances are swept to aggregate the leftover satoshis from previous transactions into a single wallet. In the case of litecoin, however, that’s not possible for the more than 50 percent of UTXOs that measure just one ‘litoshi’ in size. Sweeping them would cost more in transaction fees than the value of the dust itself. The issue can be traced back to a spam attack in late 2011. Litecoin creator Charlie Lee has now asked the community what should be done with the UTXOs that are lying in limbo.

What should we do about the 12M 1-litoshi outputs in Litecoin's UTXO set that represents more 50% of all UTXOs?

So far, crypto Twitter is split between doing nothing and having them marked as unspendable. Vitalik Buterin had a different idea however: the Ethereum founder suggested that Lee “consider an ongoing tax where all UTXOs lose 1 litoshi per N blocks.”

Kanye Teaches the Value of Opsec

Kanye West (or “Ye” as he now wants to be known) had a characteristically bizarre meeting with President Trump on Thursday. During the course of Ye’s nine-minute monologue in the Oval Office, the artist pulled out his cellphone and punched in his password. Onlookers gleefully noted Ye’s code to be six zeroes, prompting crypto commenters to use the incident as an opsec refresher.

“Pro-tip: if you’re going to be in a highly public place surrounded by cameras, change your phone’s passcode to something easy to remember that you wouldn’t use otherwise to avoid revealing your real passcode,” tweeted Peter Todd. Others used the opportunity to meme Ye’s screen when he flashed it at the president:

Cryptosphere Unites as One

Finally, in a rare moment of solidarity, crypto Twitter took time out from arguing on Thursday to unite against Nouriel Roubini. The economist, whose views have been heavily discredited in bitcoin circles, testified before a Senate committee on cryptocurrency.

really worth watching the whole congressional hearing on bitcoin. @valkenburgh describing wechat and alipay as the tools dreamed by totalitarians after @roubini recommended them was beyond perfect. https://t.co/KUus2Mx8ey

“A broken clock is right twice a day, or in @Nouriel’s case, once every 10 years,” came one retort, acknowledging the fact that Roubini has been cheering Bitcoin’s demise since 2013, when it dropped below $58. There is realistically no price bitcoin can climb or fall to at which Dr. Doom will concede that he was wrong. Like the Christmas truce of World War I, however, Roubini is to be commended for fleetingly bringing crypto foes together.

What are your thoughts on today’s news tidbits as featured in The Daily? Let us know in the comments section below.

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